


peachy keen

by the_ragnarok



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 00:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12619364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: Harold is feeling poorly. John wants to help.





	peachy keen

Harold has his humidifier, his quilted tissue paper _and_ a few handkerchiefs in place, and he sits down when he realizes he hasn't gotten himself tea.

Annoyance wars with itself. The casual calculation of everyday exhaustion: at first thought, of course, he is tempted to forget the tea and remain seated. But hydration is important, and he knows himself. If he doesn't get the tea, neither will he get up for water later.

Dehydration makes one tired, and makes an existing ill-humor - not bad enough to be called illness outright - worse. Harold grits his teeth and grips the chair's armrests.

Before he can push himself upright, however, he's stalled by a hand on his shoulder and a cup of tea on his desk. "A fresh one," Mr. Reese says, obviously pleased with himself. "From that place you like."

Harold foregoes replying in favor of picking up the cup and holding it. He is still deeply annoyed, but he will not make Mr. Reese the target of said annoyance. No matter how pointed and sly Reese is in his kindness, Harold still shouldn't return incivility for it.

"Finch?" Reese's forehead wrinkles. Harold is tempted to make petty, snappish comment on his face sticking that way. "Everything okay?"

"With the exception of Mr. Finnabar's finances, yes, fine," Harold says, putting down the tea and turning to his computer.

Reese doesn't move away. In fact, he's standing uncomfortably close, enough that warmth radiates from him.

That only makes Harold more irritable, remembering the space heater he didn't dare plug in the library. Too much of a fire hazard. "Did you want something, Mr. Reese?"

"It's all right to take a day off, you know," Reese says, too earnest, and Harold can't bear it.

"It is _not_ all right," he snaps, turning to Reese. "The numbers never stop coming. Never. I am perfectly capable of determining when I have to take a break for my own--" to his mortification, his voice breaks.

Reese is silent.

Harold swallows. "Functioning," he says, hoarse. "I know my limits, Mr. Reese. I know where I can push, and I," he breathes carefully, monitoring his voice, "can take perfectly good care of myself."

"Sure you can," Reese says, easy.

Too easy.

Reese is too sneaky by half. Harold only realizes his actions half an hour later, when he absent-mindedly reaches to adjust the blanket on his shoulders, and freezes on realization that he doesn't remember wrapping up in it.

He turns and glares at Reese, whose fascination with the book he's not reading is so blatantly false it sets Harold's teeth on edge. "Everything okay, Harold?" Reese drawls, and turns a page.

"Peachy," Harold grits through his teeth.

The blanket is warm and soft, and that makes it all the worse.

The heating pack, Harold notices even as Reese is putting it into place. And yet he can't even protest; his lower back is so glad for the relief, when Harold has been too preoccupied to realize his muscles are seizing.

Instead, he breathes methodically, working up to calmness, and says, "You may think you're being kind, Mr. Reese, but you're not."

It's incredibly grating to even think of Reese attending him; Reese, who endured torture and no doubt starvation and countless nights on watch, sleeping on the ground, wounded in the service of his country - how could he bear to cater to a crotchety old man's discomforts as though they mattered?

Except they mattered, of course they did. Nobody knew better than Harold how pain piled up, how careless minds were in its grip. Harold could not afford to be careless, so he took endless care, in everything from his socks to his suits to his computer equipment.

And for Harold to let his guard down, to get out of the habit of self-maintenance and forget to take this essential care of himself, to trust it to someone who might be away or _dead_ the next day - they did not live a very safe life, after all - would be far worse than the momentary pain or inconvenience of not having his tea at hand.

Reese is looking at him, with his disconcertingly sharp eyes. "You help people all the time," he says. "What's so bad about getting a little something in return?"

Harold can't answer. He has the words ready, explaining that saving someone from violent demise is not the same as handing them _tissues_ , but he clenches his jaws and wraps the blanket around his shoulders instead of saying anything.

"You're welcome," Reese says, after a minute. Harold might not have minded if it were faintly mocking, like so many things Reese told him. But it's gentle, and Harold wants to break something.

Instead, he lets out a breath and a "Thank you," quiet and pointed but sincere.

It surprises him that he says it; and it surprises a smile out of Reese, a silly-looking thing that warms Harold deeper than tea and blankets. "Glad to help," Reese says. The words seem startlingly intimate, for such a common reply.

The next day, John brings Harold soup, and Harold thanks him, and doesn't ask how John found Harold's favorite comfort-food restaurant.


End file.
